Most recently, Harkin has been most disturbed by the observation that NCCAM’s trials have all been negative, going so far as to complain that NCCAM hasn’t produced any positive results showing that various alternative therapies actually work. This is, of course, not a surprise, given that vast majority of the grab bag of unrelated (and sometimes theoretically mutually exclusive) therapies are based on pseudoscience. One of the only exceptions is the study of herbal remedies, which is a perfectly respectable branch of pharmacology known as pharmacognosy. Unfortunately, as David Kroll showed, in NCCAM the legitimate science of pharmacognosy has been hijacked for purposes of woo. Meanwhile, earlier this year, Senator Harkin hosted a hearing in which Drs. Dean Ornish, Andrew Weil, Mehment Oz, and Mark Hyman (he of “functionalmedicine“) were invited to testify in front of the Senate. Add to that other powerful legislators, such as Representative Dan Burton (R-IN), trying to craft legislation in line with his anti-vaccine views and pressure the NIH to study various discredited hypotheses about vaccines and autism. Clearly, when it comes to quackery, there are powerful legislative forces promoting pseudoscience and studies driven by ideology rather than science.(more…)